#8: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. – Eleanor Roosevelt

All I can say about Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice is that sometimes people do make you feel inferior and then what? Fake it ’til you make it is my advice. What about you?

What glass of wine would you sip while contemplating this quote?

I would choose a Block Nine Caiden’s Vineyards Pinot Noir 2009 from California. Nobody could feel inferior after a sip or two of this lusciously strawberried, rasberried Pinot Noir. We drank it with salmon at the Paschal table — a match made in heaven, fitting to celebrate the man from Nazareth’s resurrection. About $14 a bottle.

Rozsa’s Weekly Excerpt

From Running from Love (2011) by Rozsa Gaston

“It’s like self-esteem.” She paused. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“What was that?” It sounded familiar, like an old adage.

“Eleanor Roosevelt said it. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Jude burned at the words. That hadn’t been true in his case. There were so many ways people had made him feel inferior growing up that he couldn’t bear to think about it. He’d buried all the subtle slights and digs under the rubric of “who cares?”

“That’s great, except that Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t grow up on the wrong side of the tracks. What would she know about it?” Eleanor hadn’t been a looker but she’d come from an impeccable background, even fancier than her husband’s. It hadn’t been hard for someone like her to say something like that, he imagined.

“My, you’re getting defensive,” Ginny remarked, taking a slight step back. “You act like you know something about it yourself. Are you identifying with the poor tired masses now?”

“No. I’m just steamed because that woman messed up the best thing that’s happened to me in awhile.”

“No one can mess up anyone elses life permanently unless you let them. Barring physical injury of course…”

Jude looked down at the floor then back up at Ginny.

“Listen, I can’t talk now. I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Sure. But just remember — you need to speak to Missy before she does any more damage. Then you need to talk to whoever it was you let get away.” Ginny looked wistful, as if she were harboring secret desires of her own that weren’t likely to be satisfied anytime soon, if ever.

“Thanks for the advice. I just can’t take it right now.” He walked away quickly, trying to recover himself before he bumped into another smug Greenwichite who’d make him feel inferior after which he’d feel doubly inferior thanks to Eleanor bloody Roosevelt then Ginny Slade. As he strode down the stairs he felt even worse to think what a dignified soul Ginny was. She wouldn’t allow his disinterest to upset her apple cart. But still she hurt. There was a difference between feeling pain and feeling inferior. Too bad at that moment he felt both.

* * *

“So what were you thinking to go bad-mouthing me to your girlfriends?”

“I can’t remember at the time.” Missy fussed with a small, white-tipped nail.

“Look, are you for real? You just slandered me to my friends. In my own town.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to get real. Those weren’t your friends and this isn’t really your town.”

“What makes you think it’s yours?” An anger way out of proportion to her words flared up inside him. She was a bit too prescient for his taste.

“Who said I did?” She tossed her hair over one shoulder walking to her car in the parking lot of the Belle Haven Club.

“I’ve lived here for ten years. This is as much my town as it is yours.”

“Close, but no cigar. You live here but you’re not a player. I live here and I am.”

He felt the bile rise at the back of his throat. “What a relief to know I’m not in your club.”

“But you want to be, Jude. Too bad you’re not.”

“Who says I want to be?” he roared back. Who the hell did she think she was?

“Why else would you be writing a book on How to Marry Money?”

“Who said that was the title?”

“A little bird told me.” She laughed. Apparently his secret had leaked out all over town.

“It’s a job, alright? I write what my boss tells me to. It pays the bills.”

“Why write on such a topic just to pay some lousy bills?”

“Because I need to work for a living.”

“Dear boy. You don’t think big, do you? Maybe you should move back to wherever you came from. A small town, no?”